Up To speed
My name's Natalie Gibson and this is my story.
God, could I sound any fucking dorkier? Still, so much has happened and it's so hard to believe that it's been less than a week since this debacle began. I suppose that, maybe if I'd been the only one affected by this damned rock it wouldn't be so bad. Life would still suck, but it would just be mine and I could live with that. The problem though, the thought that keeps me awake at night is the sheer number of people who's lives have been affected by my actions as of late.
Violet's a God-Damned dog! How the fuck do you deal with something like that? Any ideas? Yeah, that's what I thought. I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself though. The story doesn't really begin with me, although in a way I guess it does. Confused yet, well welcome to my world. Take your shoes off at the door and good luck finding your way out.
I guess the story really begins with a boy. How many times have we heard that phrase in literature and film. It all started with a boy, or it all started with a girl. Of course, the types of stories the line typically applies to don't really come in to play here. It starts with the boy I used to be, or could have been, or was in some alternate reality or some shit like that. If you don't understand that's okay 'cause I'm not really sure I do either and I've been living this nightmare.
His name was Jon and he was an extremely unhappy boy. Not, my girlfriend broke up with me and I don't know what I'm going to do, unhappy. No, Jon was fundamentally broken inside. He spent his entire sixteen years on this world wanting something that he couldn't quite reach. Then his I mean our grandpa and this stupid rock came into the picture. As unbelievable as it might sound, and believe me I'd be just as skeptical as I'm sure you are at this point, this rock had the ability to grant wishes. I know, right now you're thinking I'm trying to feed you a load of bullshit, but it's true. After showing it off to his friend Karyn, Jon made a decision. It was a decision destined to fuck over everybody he cared about, not that he had any idea at the time. He closed his eyes, held the rock tightly in his hand, and wished that he'd been born a girl.
Now as I understand it, or at least what little I've distilled from everything Malcolm's told me, there are all of these realities floating around out there, completely wrapped in on themselves and invisible to the rest of us. It was something like that at least. Apparently when the rock is used, its power merges the user's universe with a universe where the change they wished for actually happened. I don't completely get it, but I'm not exactly the Star Trek science type so I've taken his word for it. When he made his wish, his reality merged with mine, a reality where he had indeed been born a girl. That's where things started to get really wonky okay not sure that's a really word but I really don't care. So Jon Gibson started living my life.
And boy did he make a mess of it! Actually, I think that's being relatively kind. By the time he got done my world was completely fucked up. It's kind of odd, remembering reality in a kind of before and after frame of mind. I can remember what things were like before his whirlwind came crashing through, but I can remember the things that happened in this altered reality too. Take my sister Jill for example. Before hand, she was a promising student a couple of years away from graduating from college. That was pre-Jon. After letting her make a wish, one that seemed so innocent at the time, her entire life flipped. Suddenly she was a single mother living in a shit hole trailer park in one of the grungiest homes I'd ever seen. I'd like to think that after that I'd have stopped the reckless wishing. This was around the time that I started emerging again. As things spiraled more and more out of control, and Jon started to lose his foothold on reality, he started wishing for memories. He'd wanted to know what his life as a girl had been like before he'd made the wish. He wanted to know what my life had been like. That was during the party Jill held. The less said about that the better thank you very much. I'm really not proud of the way we behaved.
Suffice it to say that we, and by this point my life was truly run by committee, got really drunk and really high and did some really bat shit insane and stupid things. Turning my sister's friend Violet into a dog for one. Of course we didn't know it at the time but that one event opened an entirely different can of worms in the form of merging this messed up reality with one where magic, really wizards and warlock magic was practiced. And of course, my Goth sister Zoë got involved. Later, much later we'd find out that Zoe was behind Violet's transformation, but we didn't know that at the time. I blacked out part way through the night from a combination of too much booze and too much weed and woke up the next morning. Through my reluctant use of the rock I learned that I'd fucked Rick, this guy my sister and I had picked up at the mall earlier, and another friend of hers. I, that is to say Jon and I decided it was time to tell Karyn what had had happened
Shit! I'm forgetting about Malcolm. Malcolm's an ass. Unfortunately, cryptic as he usually is, he seems to be the only one who really understands what's going on. He also has this insane effect on me. It seems like every time I see him all I wanna do is tear his clothes off and jump his bones. I'd like to say that I have excellent self control, but I don't. If I had my way, at least on a physical level, I would have well, had my way with him already. He started appearing after Jon made the initial wish. He started feeding her some tripe about Grandpa and how he was involved in all of this, and how Jon had some great destiny to fulfill. Load of horse shit that turned out to be. Anyway, he's been periodically making his presence known ever since. After the party and after Karyn
I still don't like to think about it. Karyn and I hadn't really talked in a couple of years, mostly because I'd been a first class bitch, but at the time I was still mostly Jon with a few hints of my nature scattered about, and Jon loved Karyn like a sister, maybe more. We'd gone to school, albeit extremely late, the day after the party, and that's where we learned the horrible truth. Karyn Black had pulled a Columbine. She'd walked into a classroom, my classroom shot several students and then, after pressing the gun against my temple, and I can still feel that intense cold, and the fear I'd felt that day, she turned the gun on herself and pulled the trigger. What could we do? We went back home which by now meant Jill's place. We were completely numb. When we saw Rick sitting outside all we wanted was to feel something. So we took him to the back bedroom and fucked him.
That was when we started to see Grandpa. Hope I'm not confusing you with the whole we thing by the way. By now it was very much Jon and I inside my head. He'd taken on enough of my memories that my personality was starting to show through in a much more prominent light. Rick tried to comfort us, but instead we took him home and decided to slow it down just a little. It was that night that we brought Rachel into the fold as well. On the way to her place, Malcolm appeared once again and told us more about the rock. He revealed the true nature, telling us how the Greek Gods, really Angels who'd chosen to break away from Heaven, had feared God's Wrath and locked themselves away in what I think he called some kind of pocket dimension. There'd been a second rock too, and if the two were every brought together, and the right words spoken, the Gods would be released, free to resume their reign over the Earth. He told us that our Grandfather had been trying to make exactly that happen. I didn't want to believe him back then, but now I'm not sure what I believe.
Of course, in true Malcolm fashion he vanished shortly after revealing this to us. We spoke to Rachel that night, heading over to her house, and of course Jon wished for more of my memories. We showed her the power of the rock, and told her about everything we'd done. Somehow she managed to get the rock away from us, and found out what we'd done. I still wish I hadn't brought her in on this. I guess you could say she's kind of the Karyn to my Jon, in that she'd been my best friend for a while now. I promised to bring the rock in the morning when we went to school so she could see it. After that, I went back home and had the strangest and most life affecting dream I've ever had.
Parts of it revolved around the separation between myself and Jon in my head, and parts of it tried to deal with creating a situation that Malcolm had believed impossible. Trying to meld two realities together so that Jon and Karyn could both be happy. Malcolm had said it was against the cosmic order, that one of them would always be miserable. I saw flashes of Karyn and my sister, and of the party, and the shooting and other potential shootings, but the part I think I'll always remember is the end. Jon and I were separate in the dream world and we found Grandpa, and I think it really was him. Somehow he'd managed to enter our dream. He told us that the hardest days were still to come, and that we wouldn't survive if Jon and I were so conflicted. Apparently Jon caught on a lot quicker than I did because he offered to sacrifice himself, wish himself away so that I could have full control of the body. Before he went through with it, Grandpa confirmed some of the things that Malcolm had said about the rock, and told us I guess I mean me at this point, that I needed to find his diary, that it would help me to locate the other rock.
I also realized that the hatred and pity I thought I'd felt for Jon had been my own. I knew that, at least in my world, I was the one that was responsible for what Karyn had done. I was the one that had hurt her so badly and caused her so much anger. I begged Jon not to do it, tried to convince him that he was the one who should go on, but he made that damned wish anyway. When I woke up that morning I knew that, save for some cloudy memories, Jon was gone.
I'm not sure I've ever felt that empty in my life. I also vowed that I would do what he couldn't. I was going to find a way to save Karyn and the others. I met up with Rachel this morning on the way to school, and we worked out a wish that had effectively halted the shooting. Sarah, Steve, and the others who'd died in the tragic shooting were alive. The rock confirmed that even Karyn was alive, though things had been rough for her. She'd been institutionalized for several years, but at least she was alive. That morning at school Malcolm appeared again and told me that he had interfered and that he had to explain himself. He said that this meant I might not see him for a while.
Rachel and I worked out a wish, that Karyn had found a friend after I'd hurt her so badly, somebody who could help her through that rough patch. Of course, I had no idea that friend would turn out to be my sister Zoe. Sarah had come across Rachel and I using the rock during lunch and demanded a wish. So now I was waiting for her after school
